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First of all thanks a lot for the insights. I still don't understand though why the middle class and well educated brazilians route for Argentina. Why would they route for their arch rival winning the WC on their soil? At all the Argentina games I have watched the brazilians pretty much were booing their anthem and booing argentina whenever they touch the ball and cheering on their opposition.
So are you saying that only the the vast majority of poor brazilians will route for Germany. I guess that's just not the vibe I get from Brazilian media.
People who went to the Brazil games is a fraction of the population who really cares about the country. They are rich people who paid a lot for the tickets, so why would they go to the stadium to cheer against Brazil anyway? Do you think that crowd in the stadium is the typical Brazilian soccer fan? No, not even close, the real soccer fan, the poor or middle class, the ones who fill the stadiums in our regular tournaments, they are incredibly loud and passionate, they don't stop chanting, ever. The Brazilian TV media is divided because some of the journalists are supportive of the current government and/or our corrupt soccer confederation. The neutral journalists in the main internet providers are on their vast majority supporting failure of soccer as a hope of change in the current situation, and that means Argentina should win.
I'm a middle class educated Brazilian. ALL my family and friends are rooting for Argentina. Maybe most low income Brazilians are rooting for Germany, but I'm not quite sure, people in general are getting very tired of the current situation and even the poor who are benefited by economic incentives from the government are becoming more critical.
An Argentina win can be just the last push people need to realize that enough is enough, to realize that is time to put the football passion aside and focus improving our real problems.
I am still contemplating whether to watch the 3/4 place playoff on Sat as I have never had enough interest in that game to see who comes 3rd in the cup.
Sunday's game, I imagine Argentina will heavily outnumber the Germans. Itll be interesting to see who the local neutrals are rooting for at game time.
I feel bad for both those teams..how do you find the energy to play a meaningless game after all that? What is the sense?
I feel bad for both those teams..how do you find the energy to play a meaningless game after all that? What is the sense?
Just cuz it is generally one of the more entertaining games at any World Cup.
When I visited Brazil, many/most Brazilians wanted to make it clear that they had much more passion and love for their club teams (Flamengo, Botafogo, Corinthians, Atletico Mineiro, etal.) and the national team was very much secondary and something that often frustrated them. Often simply the player selections was enough to buoy or dim their interest. England is similar.
So I imagine Brazilians will be happy to see the end of the tourneyment and won't want to think about yellow shirts for a long while.
The sentiment of Brazilians fans rooting for Argentina now is much larger than it was before the beginning, mainly fueled by the crushing loss against Germany. It's growing on social media and disseminating everywhere by the second.
We must have seen a different game then because from my pov, Argentina barely had any real chances either. Argentina had 8 shots (5 on target) compared to 7 for the Netherlands (3 on target). Both had an equal number of corner kicks and offsides while the Netherlands slightly dominated ball possession (53%). This was probably the most even match-up I've seen this entire WC. No team deserved to win more than the other so I can live with the fact that it went to penalties. It's just a shame to miss out on the final this way.
Clearly it was a different game, as in yesterday's match Holland shot on target just ONCE, a long distance shot from Robben that Romero got rather easily during the extra time (not even a single shot on target during the 90 minutes!). Of course, their biggest chance was the one Mascherano saved from Robben, but it was not an actual shot on target. There was no other risky approach.
On the other side, Argentina had Messi's freekick and a long distance shot from Rojo, both saved by Cillessen, the one from Higuain that got very close from the goalpost, Garay's header, and the two Messi assits during the extra time that where missed by Palacio and Maxi.
Undoubtely the match was pretty even. Argentina were conservative, but Holland were stingy. Argentina were slightly better overall and ultimately the deserved winners.
Undoubtely the match was pretty even. Argentina were conservative, but Holland were stingy. Argentina were slightly better overall and ultimately the deserved winners.
It was a pretty boring game for a semifinal, that's the truth, both teams extremely afraid of making any errors. Argentina and Netherlands are pretty equal, they both had easy opponents in the round of 16 and quarters (Argentina group stage was a joke) and they have defficiencies creating plays, both depend on the talent of 1 player, sometimes helped by 1-2 more. Anything I guess can happen in this WC but it should be pretty straight forward for German on Sunday.
I have concluded for a long time that the dutch never had and never will have a winning mentality. From a german perspective it's quite sad (Considering how many WC's and Euros Germany has lifted over the course of the last 60 years). I feel with our neighbors. Its especially hard to go out on penaltys.
Our winning mentality is what got us so close to the final in the first place considering our team mostly consists of young Eredivisie players. Even then the KNVB set the semi-final as a minimum target. For the Olympics, we have a top 10 position as our official target, which is quite ambitious for a country our size. It's engrained in Dutch culture to set the bar extremely high for ourselves in whatever we do and to not make excuses when we fail. We have a policy to send only the very best athletes to the Olympics - the ones who have a realistic chance to win a medal - as winning is far more important than competing to us. This kind of mentality is what sets us apart from the Belgians and it's the reason they perceive us as arrogant (and we perceive them as lackluster).
Besides, in this WC we turned a 1-0 loss against Spain into a 5-1 win, a 2-1 loss against Australia into a 3-2 win and a 1-0 loss against Mexico into a 2-1 win. You cannot make comeback after comeback like this if you lack a winning mentality.
Germany hasn't won the WC in 24 years despite being in three semi-finals since then so they're not exactly shining examples of a winning mentality either. That's only one semi-final more than us in that same time span even though you have a much bigger population (81 million vs. 17 million), a much stronger domestic league and access to far more resources.
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